


Until There's Nothing Left to Cut

by platoapproved



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Drugging, Existential Horror, F/M, Gen, Human Experimentation, Mental Illness, Murder, Necrophilia, Rape, Torture, Vivisection, and of course jaywalking, animal cruelty, attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 22:09:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platoapproved/pseuds/platoapproved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering,' or: how Ned learned to stop worrying and love the dark side.</p><p>NOTE: I posted an earlier, incomplete draft of this story a few weeks ago.  This is a much-altered, complete version.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until There's Nothing Left to Cut

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/590440). This is a story that's been plaguing me for a long time, but reading that version spurred me on to stop being lazy and finally write out my all my grimdark ideas.
> 
> Please heed the warnings in the tags; this is some pretty sick stuff. If there's anything I forgot to warn for, please let me know.

Olive has the office to herself that night. Emerson is across town at the arts and crafts fair, haggling over knitting paraphernalia with little old ladies half his size. She, meanwhile, is reading a magazine while her peach-painted fingernails dry. When she hears the ring of the bell, she waves the client in without looking up; she is still working on cultivating that true private investigator world-weariness and indifference.

“Cod & Snook. I'm Snook, Cod's out fishing. Take a seat and tell me your troubles.” She hears the stranger sit down obediently, congratulates herself on just how flinty she must seem.

“Nice speech, Olive,” says a familiar voice. Olive starts, looks up quickly, mouth dropping open in shock. “You always were good with words.”

“Ned?” she breathes out, disbelieving her eyes.

The orange streetlight coming in through the slats of the blinds bleaches Ned of all color, illuminates his face in weird, menacing horizontal strips. It's been a little under a year since Olive last saw him, and he is almost unrecognizable. The change is so horrible that after a few seconds of blank shock, she falls back on her PI training, catalogues the changes while trying to guess what caused them. It isn't difficult; his body tells the story of his mistreatment loudly. His skin is waxy, stretched tightly over his bones by malnutrition, and pale from lack of sunlight. His hair - that hair that she once loved so much - is gone, shaved down to a short dark fuzz. His eyebrows are a patchy mess, his eyelashes missing entirely, his nails bitten to the quick. The pinky finger on his left hand is gone. She sees a sequence of numbers tattooed on the back of his hand, strange injuries on both his arms. There is what looks like a burn, in a perfect square, with a small number tattooed beneath it - a label. Next to it, a dark brown square of what looks like grafted skin, with its own label. There are more, but Olive cannot make herself focus on them. The crook of his arm is scarred, as if from botched injections.

She forces herself to look at the scar on his neck, next. It is just below his Adam's apple, jagged and gently sloped, a raw raised pink line. He wouldn't have gotten that from trying to kill himself with a knife, she thinks.

“A mirror,” he says. She meets his eyes guiltily; there is a cold smile of understanding on his mouth. He leans forward so that she can inspect it in the halo of the desk light. “I broke a mirror and used one of the pieces.” He mimes drawing a piece of glass across his neck, still smiling. “Didn't do it deep enough.” He stares at her, unflinching and unreadable. Nothing like the Ned she remembers. Eye contact with him was brief, fleeting, shy, and warm. His body language has radically changed, too. That had been one of the first things she noticed about Ned, back when she applied to work at the Pie Hole. They way he slouched, curled, tried to make himself as small and as nonthreatening as possible. She'd fallen in love with the way he hid his hands in his pockets and ducked his head and sat on chairs as if he were sorry to trouble them. All of that tension gone, now. He is sprawled on the client's chair at his ease, legs spread and feet planted firmly on the ground.

“Aren't you going to ask me what happened?” he says.

“We thought you were dead.”

“Afraid not.”

“I should call Emerson and tell him—” her hand is on the phone when his closes over it, firmly, keeping the phone in its cradle.

“I'd much prefer if you didn't.” If it were anyone but Ned, Olive would think she heard an undercurrent of menace in the request. “We need to have a talk, first. Just the two of us.” She nods and he lets her go, settling back down in the chair.

“Where have you been?” Olive asks.

“In a lab, mostly. One of those secret underground facilities that only conspiracy nuts believe in?” His smile is thin as a knife, and just as cold. “They're a lot less funny when you're in one.”

“And h-how'd you get out?”

“Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren't we? Why don't I start at the beginning, and work my way forward? That seems like the best way of telling the story, to me. I was thinking about it a lot, on my way here. How I was going to tell you. Going through it in my head over and over and over, you know?" He makes a repeated, revolving motion with his finger in the air next to his ear - the same gesture often used to imply insanity. "Been a long time since I've had a proper conversation, after all, and it's so much to say. I think I know just the way to start.

“There was a saying that kept coming into my head, as I was trying to make sense of it all. It's silly, really. It's so silly you aren't going to believe it. It was that line from Star Wars. You know, ‘fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering’?

“I loved that so much when I was a kid. I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever heard. The thing I didn't realize back then was that's the way the progression should go. I was still too afraid to see it. I was afraid of everything, until a few months ago. Afraid I was a monster, a freak of nature. Afraid I was going to hell. Afraid people would find out about me. Afraid people would abandon me. Afraid people would touch me. You get the idea. Some of it was justified, and some of it wasn't. I didn't realize that when you've lived your entire life suffocated by fear, learning to be angry is like learning to breathe.

“But now I'm the one getting ahead of myself. The story starts with fear. I barely had time to be afraid, when they grabbed us. It was really a very clever trap. Ambulance blocking the road in a deserted area, so I stopped the car and Chuck and I got out to see if everyone was alright. Only on the other side of the ambulance there weren't any crashed cars, and then one of the paramedics was coming at me with a cloth and some chloroform. I was conscious long enough to see one of them shoot Digby after he bit them.”

Olive covers her mouth in surprise and horror, but Ned pays her no mind. He doesn't falter in his story, pressing on without any visible sign of distress.

“When they brought us to that lab… you should have seen me. I was paralyzed with fear. They had to wheel me in, because I couldn't even move. I was too scared to scream, or cry, or make a sound. They put me on an oxygen machine so I didn't pass out. Pathetic, right?

“I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on myself. After all, my worst nightmares were coming true. I had always been terrified that people would find out. Not people like you or Emerson, of course. Important, scary people. The kind of people who could make me disappear. I'd had bad dreams about it since I was a kid. My whole life, I'd taken all kinds of crazy precautions—big and small—to avoid attention. All those little quirky habits, like never going to the doctor? Nearly all of them were down to that fear. In fact, I'm pretty sure avoiding detection was the first principle on which I based the majority of my life's decisions.

“You have no idea how exhausting it is, living under the weight of that paranoia. Part of me had always been convinced that no matter what I did, it was never going to be enough. The alive-again cat would get out of the bag, one way or another. And I was right. So when they sat me down and showed me my own death certificate, told me that I was never leaving that facility, I wasn't really so surprised.

“But seeing it coming all those years only made it worse when it did happen. Looking back now, outside the fear, those first few weeks look a lot different than they did at the time. They only wanted to do really minor stuff. Hair sample, skin sample, empty little plastic cups for every bodily fluid you can think of. They weighed me and measured me and fingerprinted me and photographed me from every angle. MRIs, X-rays, running on treadmills, IQ tests, eyesight tests, dental tests. Questions about my family history, about when and how I’d found out about my power. It wasn't anything worse than that. But because of the fear, it was hell to me. I don't expect you'd understand.

“I think the people working at the facility—I won’t bother telling you their names—really tried to be as patient as they could, at first. They didn't understand why I was so upset. At first, they tried to win me over with reason. They explained every procedure beforehand, tried to engage me in conversation. They argued that they weren’t going to hurt me, or kill me. I was an important asset to them, wasn’t I? My participation—as if I’d volunteered!—was going to help advance medical science by centuries. If I behaved myself, I could lead a perfectly comfortable life in the facility. My happiness was up to me, they said.

“All their justifications fell on deaf ears, of course. In those first few weeks, I used to shake so much the examination tables rattled. I flinched any time one of them came within a few feet of me, whimpered when they touched me. Fear really has an unparalleled way of taking over your body without your permission. After a while they stopped making arguments and started treating me like some kind of frightened animal. I suppose I was one. They shushed and cooed, petted me and spewed patronizing praise if I managed to stay still long enough for them to use their needles.

“Then I got the idea into my head that I should be brave. Be the hero of the story. I hadn't seen Chuck since the ambulance, you see. So, one day, I told one of them that if they just let her go, I'd cooperate completely. Tell them everything I knew about my power, do all the tests they wanted. Help with duties around the lab, even. Bake them all pies, if you can believe it. I offered to be the best prisoner they could imagine.

“I never had a chance. They said they couldn't do that. Couldn’t. As if letting her go were impossible.

“I came up with another solution. The next day, I asked if I could at least see her. They seemed happy that I was talking so much, so I really spun them a yarn. Went on and on about how the two of us had been childhood sweethearts. Said how much I missed her down here. I’d feel better if I could just check up on how she was doing. I got the distinct impression they didn’t want to seem unreasonable. The next day, when they brought me into their main lab for tests, Chuck was there. She looked—”

For the first time since he began, Ned falters. The narrow smile slips from his face and he looks, suddenly, rather like a lost child. Olive doesn't say anything, watches as his eyes dart from side to side as if to find the right words. His hands begin to curl and uncurl upon the arms of the chair, as if in confusion. His thin chest rises and falls rapidly with shallow breaths.

“She looked—” his voice cracks, and he goes silent once more.

Ned licks his lips, closes his eyes, and stops breathing for a few seconds. He exhales, long and slow, before opening his eyes. When he looks at her again, the sadness, the confusion is gone. The little smile curls its way back onto his mouth. He flexes his hands, comfortably, cracks each of his knuckles in quick succession. Then he goes on with his story as if there had been no pause at all.

“When they were about to take her away, I asked if she wanted a goodbye kiss, and she said yes. So I gave her one.”

Ned pauses, lets the silence carry his meaning.

Olive's voice is small in the darkness, “She—”

“Died, yes. In my arms. I hadn't realized she would decompose right away. It was as if all that stolen time was catching up to her, in fast-forward. She was murdered a few years ago, so it was… messy. They had to sedate me to pry away what was left of her. You know, I hadn't even cried until that point? But once I started, I couldn't stop. Not for days.”

There are tears streaming down Olive's cheeks, now, but Ned doesn't seem to notice or care.

“After that, I wasn't afraid. I just let them do whatever they wanted with me. I didn't care. They had to lift me out of bed and carry me to the labs, because I wouldn't stand up. I wouldn't get up to use the bathroom, so they put in a bedpan. I stopped talking entirely, didn't listen to anything they said to me. It was like they were speaking in another language.

“I don't know how long I was like that. It was hard to keep track of time down there even at the sanest of times. They did this at some point—” Ned runs a hand over his shaved head, “—but I didn't notice. That whole period is a haze in my memory. But I do remember the day it ended. You'll like this bit.

“They got it into their heads that maybe my power was genetic. My half-brothers hadn't gotten it, but maybe, if I had a kid, he or she would. So they decided to breed me.

“I don't know why they didn't take a semen sample and use artificial insemination. Maybe it was because the other option was cheaper. Or it could have been as a punishment. You have to understand, they didn't like what I'd done to Chuck. They were almost as interested in her as a specimen than they were in me. They hadn't had a chance to run a fraction of the tests on her that they wanted to. After she died, they became… vindictive.

“So they washed me up, tied me down, and gave me a little blue pill to swallow. I didn't understand what was happening when they brought the girl in. It didn't make any sense, but when she started touching me, I wanted it to stop. It was the first time I'd wanted something, since Chuck. Bad timing, don't you think? Wake up from my total stupor just in time for that. Then again, maybe that wasn't even the first time. I think it was, but I'm not sure.

“But where are my manners? I've been painting you a pretty vivid picture so far, if you don't mind me saying so. But you don't want to hear about bed pans and blood samples. It's only fair I go into detail, now. Give you the whole salacious scoop, as a treat. After all, you never did go through with it all the way.”

Olive has kept her silence up to this point, but she cannot any longer. “Ned, what—?”

“Raping me, Olive. You never quite did it, though I suppose I should give you points for effort. What? Don't look so shocked. We both remember what it was like. Or maybe you don't. You always had selective hearing, maybe your memories are just as incomplete.”

Ned isn't smiling anymore. He leans forward, stares her straight in the face, until she has to look away. There is a hard edge of bitterness in his voice as he goes on, speaking faster now. This, she can tell, isn't a part of his rehearsed story. This is improvised, immediate, raw.

“I told you, right after we met, that I didn't like being touched. I didn't mean it as a challenge, but apparently that's how you took it. It was one thing after another, with you. Watching me, all the time, every day. Hugging me. Kissing me. Always looking for excuses to touch me. Bumping into me, accidentally-on-purpose. Shoulder massages when I was doing the books, no matter how many times I asked you to stop. Offering to trim my hair for me, offering to do my nails for me, offering to teach me yoga, of all things. Giving me self-help books about discovering my inner sex god. Trying to get me to go swimming so you could see me with my clothes off. Trying to get me drunk every weekend. Trying to make me feel guilty for saying no to you. You think I didn't already feel bad?”

The disdain in Ned's voice increases, gradually, until he is all but spitting the words.

“You were my friend - my first real friend in years. I don't think you can imagine how badly I wanted you to like me. You've never been alone, Olive. Not really. You've always had connections to people who love you, your parents and your friends and your boyfriends. When I met you, I was isolated, vulnerable, miserable. I'd been alone for years. Of course, there'd been people around me, but that isn't the same thing. Every scrap of affection you tossed my way was like a wonderful gift. I didn't think very highly of myself, back then. So I did everything I could to prove that I was worth it, except it wasn't enough. You wanted my body, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't force myself let you have it.

“I heard you, you know? One time, I came back from getting groceries and you were on the phone, lamenting to someone about how I was so shy. All you wanted to do was jump my bones, but I had soooo many hang-ups. It was so unfair. What was the point of working in a candy shop if you weren't allowed to sneak a little sugar, now and then? I tried not to listen in, but then you said you were starting to think you should… what was the phrase? 'Just strap me to the bed and show me what I was missing, already'?”

In a rush, Olive remembers the phone call. Her cheeks burn with shame and anger.

“That was a private conversation—” she objects, trying to claw her way back to the moral high ground, but Ned cuts her off mid-sentence.

"About how you thought it would be a good idea to rape me.” The silence is heavy. Ned closes his eyes, “Well, someone beat you to it.”

He runs his four-fingered hand back and forth over the crown of his head. Self-comforting body language, offers the PI side of Olive’s mind. She recognizes the pattern this time; Ned holds his breath first, then exhales, opens his eyes, cracks each of his knuckles, and the cold, smiling façade is back.

“You remember how that progression goes? Fear to anger, anger to hate, hate to suffering? I wasn’t afraid when she climbed on me: I was angry. I didn’t plead, I shouted obscenities. I thrashed and kicked and bit her arm when she leaned too close. Hard enough to draw blood. Would’ve torn a chunk out of her with my teeth, if she hadn’t been quick. I was completely feral.

“Of course, I couldn’t do anything more, tied down like that. I wasn’t strong enough to break free. But I kept trying. It’s odd, I remember how hot the tears felt, going down the sides of my face. Tears are always around the same temperature, of course, but they felt like they’d burn me, right then. I sobbed. Swore that I was going to kill her, that I was going to gut her, and all the rest of them. I’m sure they were observing us. Probably taking notes on the other side of their one-way mirrors. Who knows, maybe some of them were even getting off on it.

“Do you know, depending on how you define it, that may have been my first time? And I didn’t even catch her name. She wasn’t another prisoner there, I know that much. I would have been able to tell.

“After it was done, and she’d left, the anger didn’t fade. Not one bit. Before, I’d never really gotten why people said they ‘saw red’ when they were angry. That day, I saw red for the first time. I was so full of rage that there wasn’t room for anything else. I wasn’t afraid of what they might do to me. I wasn’t sad about what they’d made me do to Chuck. All I wanted was to hurt them. Have you ever felt that, Olive? I don’t mean your little fantasies about setting Chuck on fire – yes, Emerson told me about that. I mean really, honestly, felt that you wanted to hear someone scream in pain and know you caused it? Felt as if the violence were in you, coiled up, and the only way to stop feeling sick was to let it out?

“You see, fear is like a fog that forces you to huddle down and imagine what might be out there in the mist. Anger like I felt then is clear. It’s sharp, beautiful, clean, and perfect. Blinding, like staring at the sun. It burned away everything extraneous. I would go for days on end without thinking. I waged war on my captors, but there was no strategy to it. My tactics were crude, improvised from minute to minute. I broke furniture. I ripped my clothes to shreds. I threw my shit at them. I howled until my throat was torn, and then I spat the blood in their faces.

Some days, I wouldn’t eat the food they brought me, and when they force-fed me, I tried to bite them. Some days I would eat it, because I wanted to be strong enough to tear their eyes out with my fingernails, if I got the chance. When I was particularly worked up and couldn’t get at them, I tore at myself. Pulled out my eyebrows and eyelashes and pubic hair. Gnawed my nails off, bit my arms, threw myself against the walls until I was black and blue. Dislocated my shoulder, once. You know, they moved me to a padded room, because I tried to bash my own brains out on the cement? A real padded room, just like in movies. They added a straightjacket, too, after I did this.” Ned taps the scar on his neck, chin lifted in what is, unmistakably, vanity. “The new guy should’ve known better than to leave me alone with a glass mirror.”

“The last of them lost sympathy for me, at that point. Can’t really say I blame them. I imagine I made their jobs hell. I certainly tried to. The procedures they put me through got sicker and sicker. A part of me was proud, because I knew I was getting to them. There were a lot of surgeries. I don’t remember what all of them were about. I know they cut out one of my kidneys and put it in another person, to see if it would give them my powers. They took my bone marrow, too, and filled me with someone else’s blood. Put someone else’s skin on me, pulled my skin off and saw if what was underneath would do the trick. Cut off my finger to see if it would still work. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was an actual experiment and what was a punishment. The lines got blurred.”

Olive’s disgust must be showing on her face, because Ned pauses, a furrow forming between his brows.

“It isn’t as if you have any right to make that face, Olive. You didn’t have to live through it. Besides, I’m just giving your the edited highlights. There are things I’m leaving out. Nasty things. They kept me awake for days at a time. Burned me with acid. Filled me with drugs that gave me hallucinations I don’t even know the words to describe. Force-fed me raw human flesh. Oh, yes. More than once. They said they’d keep doing it until I stopped vomiting it up. You do realize it would come alive inside me, the moment it touched me? Yes, they got quite creative, over time.

“But perhaps you’re right, and it is time to move on with the story. We don’t have all night. With one thing and another, they finally broke me. I ran out of anger. I was too frail to keep it up. You see, we’re almost at the end, now. Fear to anger, anger to hate and suffering. Those two go hand in hand.”

Ned knits his fingers together in illustration. There’s a hush to his voice that is new. Olive notices that the sounds of traffic and pedestrians from the street below have ceased. It must be late.

“Do you know what a vivisection is? It’s like a surgery, only they aren’t trying to fix anything. They’re just cutting you open to look at what’s inside.”

He pulls his shirt up around his shoulders, shows off the constellations of surgical scars spanning his concave torso. Running down the center, like a meridian, is one very long scar. He taps a finger to it before letting his shirt fall back into place.

“They had me open for hours. They gave me drugs for the pain, but I was awake. The way it made me feel… I wasn’t just numb. The pain was still there, but it couldn’t touch me. At the time, I imagined it was like I was standing in the center of a frozen ocean, looking down through the ice. And underneath, the pain was there, like a giant sea monster, rubbing its hideous back along the bottom of the ice.

“I don’t know why they kept me awake for it. Maybe they wanted me to watch. There was a mirror. They were probably using it to see from another angle, but it meant that I could see, too. Watched them sticking their hands in me, felt them sifting through  
my organs. You know, Olive, there are… there are parts of a body that weren’t ever meant to be touched. It felt so wrong. Worse than anything they’d done before. But I wasn’t angry at them for it. It was different than that.

“When people talk about hatred, most of the time they mean bitterness, or jealousy, or even our two old friends, fear and anger. Real hate isn’t like that. I had an epiphany, lying on that table. I realized that I had never really hated those people before that moment. I’d only thought what I was feeling was hate. I watched them pecking and prodding at my insides and I understood what they were. Every facet of them. And I understood that they shouldn’t exist.

“They were the source of all suffering. Everything they’d put me through was only a single grain of sand in an endless desert of pain and humiliation and torture. I’m not going to lie to you – it was an almost mystical feeling. As if an invisible veil had been parted and I could see all the people, in all the years, suffering, causing each other to suffer. It wasn’t their fault. The people who ran that facility weren’t evil people, separate and divisible from the good people who existed elsewhere. It was endemic. Inborn. Life is suffering. The people we call good cause themselves to suffer, and the people we call bad cause others to suffer. It’s all the same, in the end. I realized that all people are nothing more than evil meat, waiting for their turn to rot in peace.

“Once I understood that, the pain went away. Not the pain in my body – the pain in my mind. It felt so good. Like letting go of a breath I’d been holding my entire life. You know, before that, I’d always felt a little guilty for existing? In the back of my mind. I thought of myself as toxic. I suppose killing your own mother can do that to you. When I was in that place, there was a tiny part of me that was sure I deserved everything they did to me. Until that vivisection, that is.

“I suppose you could say I stopped hating myself and started hating everyone else, instead. All the things that seemed important to me before were now tiny. I didn’t care if there was no God. I didn’t care that I wasn’t human. I’m not, you know. I’ve spent the last twenty years trying convince myself otherwise, when the truth is irrefutable.”

Ned leans forward in his chair, and Olive nearly starts. He has been so still for so long, the sudden change catches her off guard. Not taking his gaze away from hers, Ned reaches for the small, potted spider plant on the desk between them. Delicately, deliberately, he takes one of its paper-thin leaves between his thumb and forefinger. Before Olive’s eyes, the plant withers, shriveling with the soft sound of drying leaves. In a manner of seconds, it is dead. She stares, numb with horror and confusion.

“I am not human,” Ned repeats, for emphasis, settling back into the chair. His smile is one degree wider, and there is a faint flush on his sunken cheeks.

“After they sewed me up, and the drugs wore off, that feeling of distance remained. Like I was at the bottom of a well so deep I couldn’t see any light at the top, or else in orbit, a hundred miles away from anything but cold, and silence, and airless nothing. I felt as if my body were made of ice. Fear and anger are so both so hot, so visceral. But they’d taken my…well, my viscera, out into the cold air one time too many. When they sewed me back up, the sewed some of the coldness in.

“I was a good little guinea pig, while my wounds healed. Let the hatred spread in me, like frost, until it had covered every possible surface. I didn’t mind biding my time. They started to give me a few little freedoms back, as encouragement, now that I wasn’t trying to bite them. Stopped watching me so closely. Even let me take walks around the facility—supervised, of course.

“Some of the people working there didn’t want to give me an inch. They thought I would take a mile, if given half a chance. They were right, of course. One of them decided to teach me a lesson in a supply closet, during one of my little strolls. No cameras in there. That was why he chose it. He’d gotten away with it before. He didn’t realize I was different, now. I wasn’t clawing off curls of his skin any longer, but I was far from harmless.

“I’m a little disappointed that I wasn’t looking at him when it happened. I had a faceful of concrete floor at the time. He was holding my wrists together with one of his hands while he tried to get his belt undone, and I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be better if he just stopped. And all at once I felt this rush. It was like that feeling you get on a roller coaster, when you’re falling and your stomach goes weightless. Unpleasant at first, but then, after the initial jolt, every inch of me felt hot and shivery and perfect.

“I noticed that he wasn’t holding me down anymore, so I rolled over and saw that he was dead. I knew I’d done it. That rush I’d felt, that was his life. Coming out of him, and into me. When I used to touch corpses back to life, it never really had much effect on me. I was just a conduit, redirecting energy. This was different. I was flooded with it. I’d stolen it and could feel it seeping into every cell in my body.

“I tried touching him to see if he would come alive again, but he didn’t. Maybe that power was for an old Ned—a Ned I hadn’t been for a long time. This new power suits the new me much, much better, don’t you think? Perhaps I can’t give life anymore. You know what I think? I think I still can. I think I’m in control of it, now. After all, I don’t kill everything I touch. I touched you earlier, for instance, and you didn’t die. I have to want it. I think that if I wanted to, I could give and take life with a touch, without restrictions or consequences. I wonder what that makes me?

“But back to the story. It was a very ecstatic experience, that first time. I realized I could win. Without even meaning to, I had snatched my freedom right from out of their hands. I saw it all laid out before me: how I would use this to escape. How I could make them all stop, like I’d made him stop. And I felt so warm, and happy, and full of hate. I didn’t know how to manage it. I have to admit I got a bit… carried away, with his body. It was the only time I’ve done that, but I don’t regret it. As far as I’m concerned, he’d earned it. Turnabout is fair play.

“After I was done I put on his clothes and shoes and key card. It was so strange, wearing actual clothes shoes for the first time in months. I felt like an animal in a costume. Do you have any idea how it felt, being alone, after months of being supervised every second of every day? There was a point where the hallway branched off in two directions and I stood there like an idiot for at least a minute, because it had been so long since I got to decide which way I was going to go. I made my way through the facility pretty aimlessly. If I came across anyone, I touched them before they could make a fuss. By the time I’d killed a dozen or so of them I felt so light I was surprised my feet were even touching the ground.

“It wasn’t the kind of prison break you’d see in an action movie. No running around dodging machine gun fire. That facility wasn’t designed to contain what I’d become. They didn’t have safeguards. No weapons, no codes, no lockdown procedures. All they’d ever needed to subdue me before were their bodies. They didn’t stand a chance.

“After I’d stopped them all, I went back through and cleaned up. Burned their paper records, smashed all the computers. Stole anything useful and portable I could find. Let out all the other animals they had caged up. I pulled them out of their filthy boxes one by one and took them outside. They bit and scratched and yowled and pissed on me, but then, we’ve all been there. I’m sure most of them died within the next few days, but you never know. I made it out. Back to civilization.

“Yes, you see, the story’s just about done, now. Why don’t we skip ahead to tonight. You’ve been such a good listener, Olive. I’m surprised you haven’t stopped me to ask why I’m telling you all this. I lied to you, earlier. Sorry about that. I said I would start at the beginning, but I didn’t. You have to understand, it’s very difficult. Fitting all the pieces together. Making it make sense. To start at the beginning I would have to start with how those people found out that I existed.

“I had a lot of time to think, while I was staring at the ceiling of that padded room, lying perfectly still, trying to forget how they’d cut me in half and stapled me back together again. I asked myself how they’d finally found me. What had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Such a violent cliché, isn’t it? And yet it fits. I went through all the permutations and possibilities and realized that it must have been you. You told someone, didn’t you? Let me guess: Alfredo? Yes, I thought it was him. Your face tells me I’m right. Even though you swore to me that you’d never tell anyone, under any circumstances. I should have known. You were never much good with secrets. Maybe that is why I put it off so long—I always knew that there was a good possibility you’d betray me. But Chuck insisted I didn’t have enough faith in you. 

“Did you know you were the first person I told voluntarily? When Emerson found out on accident, I thought it really was the end. Thought he would turn me in for a reward and I would live through horrors untold. But he never even threatened, not even before we were friends. He had so much power over me, but he never threatened to use it. He did the opposite, in fact. Helped keep me and Chuck in line, helped us hide, helped us clean up our messes. He understood right away, without having to be told, what it would mean for us if anyone found out.

“But you? I tell you and a couple weeks later I’m in some godforsaken bunker staring down at my death certificate and a few decades of captivity.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure you had your reasons. You loved him, trusted him, and after all what harm could it do? You see, Olive, I know what you are, now. You’re the kind of selfish, self-centered person who believes that the universe is basically kind. You see the possible good in other people, the best possible outcome in things. All silver lining and no the cloud. It sounds lovely, on a card, but clouds do exist. It’s silver linings that are imaginary. One of those little metaphors people use to distract themselves from their own mortality.

“I used to really love that energy, that innocence of yours. Yes, love. I did love you, once. Maybe not in the way you wanted, but I did. It seems hard to imagine, now. I couldn’t figure out how you had stayed so naïve, so late in life. I wanted what you had. I wanted to assume, like you did, that things would work out fine in the end, because bad things happen in other places, to other people, and are certainly never your fault. You never questioned your right to exist, and be happy.

“So you told Alfredo. Oh, not all the details, not how it worked. Just the facts of the matter: that Chuck from the Pie Hole was really Charlotte Charles, that she had died and I had brought her back to life with my magic powers. You made him promise to keep it a secret, but it’s a game of diminishing returns. Every subsequent promise gets just a little bit weaker. Soon enough he told someone, and maybe that someone told someone else, etcetera, and it ended up with the two of us, sitting here.”

Olive is frozen in place. She should run, she thinks. She should get the gun from her bag, but it’s on the other side of the room. His eyes are on her still, and she feels transfixed. Like one of those animals in a nature documentary, staring with glazed eyes at an approaching cobra. Ned rests his elbows on his knees and his chin on his interlaced hands, smiling as if he knows what she’s thinking.

“Do you want to know another secret, Olive? I don’t know the end of this story. I haven’t thought ahead further than this. I wonder what I’m going to do, after we’re done here. Am I going to leave a letter for Emerson, explaining? Or should I let him think it was a heart attack. Tragic, at your age. And you seemed so healthy. Or maybe I could wait for him, here. Maybe he’ll walk in that door and I’ll see him and realize the error of my ways. That killing is wrong, and humanity is worth saving after all. That I should turn away from the dark side and use my powers for good. I think I’d make quite the tortured anti-hero, don’t you? I’ve certainly had enough practice being tortured.

“Or maybe he’d be the final piece that I don’t even realize the puzzle is missing. Maybe I’ll see him and realize he’s the same as the rest of you humans. Maybe there isn’t a corner of me left that isn’t made of ice. I suppose I will cross that bridge when I come to it. You come first. Well, second. I dealt with Alfredo earlier this afternoon.”

Ned gets to his feet, hands splayed flat on the desk.

“How would you like to do this? A handshake? Perhaps a kiss? You making a break for the door isn’t really the sort of poetic tableau I was hoping for, but it is your prerogative.”

Olive, too, stands up. Her hand, when she lifts it for Ned to kiss, is shaking badly. He reaches for it and she pulls it away in fright before he can touch her.

“Will it hurt?” she asks, voice small with terror.

“No,” Ned assures, and there is a kindness to his smile that almost reminds her of the Ned she used to know. “It will be quick, and painless.”

Olive thinks that, despite everything, he’s more beautiful now than ever before. It’s not a human kind of beauty. She glances at the dead plant, at Ned, at the picture of Alfredo on the desk. She extends her arm again. Ned’s touch is warm, and she feels her fingers start to go numb almost at once.

“Thank you for listening,” he says, and kisses the back of her hand.


End file.
